IN-DEPTH FEATURESLessons into the Human Soul — From the Beis Medrash
of the Chazon Ish

Memoirs of Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz

Chapter Six

Shlomo Hamelech delineated for us the advantages of the
tzaddik, and taught that one must study his ways and
conduct and tell of his praises. We must uphold the honor of
the tzaddik, for this is beneficial to our thought
processes. There is no doubt that praising the righteous and
examining their ways is praiseworthy for the teller, and the
more one does so, the better. Telling about tzaddikim
is sweet like honey.

Each One According to His Blessing

In his commentary on Mishlei (16:1), the Gaon says on
the verse, "The thoughts of the heart are man's, but from
Hashem comes the utterance of the heart," as follows: This is
the way a person should conduct himself to follow Hashem's
will; it is good council.

"Every single person has an individual path to follow, for
people are different from one another just as their faces are
different. Their natures are disparate. When there were
prophets, people would go to them to seek counsel and to
learn what Hashem required of them. The prophet would then
prophesy and tell them what path to pursue, each according to
the particular root and origin of his soul. This is what is
meant by, `The thoughts of the heart are man's.' A person had
to prepare his heart to be willing to do what was right,
while the prophet would tell him how to go about it, which is
`the utterance of Hashem.' "

The Gaon adds that after prophecy was removed from us, the
measure of Divine inspiration was transmitted, in some small
measure, to each and every Jew. If his heart is pure and he
is worthy, he will be able to divine the unique way which
suits his own nature and inclination.

But who is to say, "I am worthy and am not fooling myself?"
as Dovid Hamelech was able to declare, "Blessed is the man to
whom Hashem imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile."?

The commentaries say something in the same vein concerning
what is stated about the blessing Yaakov Ovinu gave to his
sons: "Each one according to his blessing." Each one
according to his particular character, his latent strengths
and weaknesses. He `blessed them,' that is, he implanted deep
into the soul of each one of his children the blessing that
applied uniquely to him. Yehuda, for example, was blessed
with royalty, Yissochor with the power to toil in Torah and
so on.

We were able to discern this power by the Chazon Ish, as
well. Maran had that insight of being able to look into the
soul of the man standing before him and was subsequently able
to guide him along the particular way that suited him
according to his tendencies. He advised people to occupy
themselves with things that were compatible with their
strengths and leanings, and would even convince them that
this was their mission on earth and that no other person
could fulfill that particular role in the same manner.
Therefore, a person was obligated to carry out that
responsibility in the best and most perfect way he possibly
could.

"You Are More Suitable"

When the time came to choose a representative of Zeirei
Agudath Yisroel for the Knesset, there arose a difference of
opinion between myself and R' Moshe Shonfeld zt'l,
with each of us indicating that the other be chosen for the
position. We decided to leave the decision up to the Chazon
Ish. I argued that R' Moshe was undoubtedly more talented
than I was in every area and that he was the best candidate
to represent Torah-true Jewry in the Knesset.

Maran, however, decided on me, explaining why: "You may be
right [as far as R' Moshe being more talented]. However, you
are better suited for this particular role and you will be
successful at it. R' Moshe will take upon himself a different
office which is better adapted to his individual
characteristics." And so it was. R' Moshe Shonfeld was very
successful in the task he was given.

Borrowed Intellect

The principle that a person is only capable of acting
according to his particular nature and to his way of thinking
and understanding is well illustrated through the following
story:

I once came to Maran accompanied by a prestigious Jew from
America. In the course of our talk the guest made several
suggestions to the Chazon Ish regarding communal matters. He
added that if the Chazon Ish were to approve of these ideas
and implement them, the public in Eretz Yisroel, as well as
throughout the world, would embrace them.

Maran replied with a smile, "I cannot work with a borrowed
intellect."

He explained, "If I do what you suggest, I will have to
return to you the intellect I borrowed. Then I will be left
without any intellect." [Editor: Perhaps the meaning is that
even if he follows the specific suggestion made by the
visitor, he will not have the benefit of the visitor's
intellect to help him deal with the aftermath of the act, and
will not be able to use his own intellect since the process
was initiated with someone else's intellect.]

His Advice to a Woman to Donate Only One
Third

In 5709 when I was in the States, I made the acquaintance of
a wealthy woman who wanted to give a huge sum for the
establishment of a yeshiva which would bear her name.

I was overjoyed at the proposition, and suggested that she
give the money for Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim for Aguda youth in
Kfar Saba which was, at the time, one of the best and most
famous of yeshivos. Its rosh yeshiva was HaGaon R' Aharon
Leib Steinman shlita.

She showed interest in my suggestion and said that she would
like to visit the yeshiva and when she next made a trip to
Eretz Yisroel, she promised to bring along her donation.

She arrived, went to visit the yeshiva in Kfar Saba and duly
expressed her intention to donate the large sum she had
promised. She had one request, however: that the Chazon Ish
give her his blessing before she gave the money.

I brought her in to the Chazon Ish and introduced her.
Instead of giving her his blessing however, the Chazon Ish
began asking her all kinds of questions. "Who are you? Where
are you from? How do you come to have such a large sum of
money?"

She told him that she had worked as a nurse in a hospital in
the U.S. Over the years, she had put aside most of her
earnings, stinting on her own living expenses so that
eventually she would be able to donate a large sum to a
yeshiva. In her childhood, she explained, she had repeatedly
heard from her father that this was the most important thing
on earth and now the time had come to realize her dream in
life.

Maran advised her not to donate her entire savings. "Give
only a third and leave two thirds for yourself, lest you need
it when you grow old. In addition, you must stipulate that
the portion you donate towards the yeshiva be legally
recorded in your name. If you do this, I shall confer my full
blessing upon you and your generous gesture."

I left Maran's house in a turmoil; my head was in a whirl. I
simply could not understand what had taken place there. Why
hadn't the Chazon Ish allowed her to donate the full sum? Why
only a third? And most puzzling of all was the condition that
her part of the building be registered on her name! These
questions perturbed me no end and that evening I felt I had
to go back to the Chazon Ish for an explanation.

Maran smiled at me with his famous smile and said, "Why don't
you understand? This woman came to ask for my blessing. This
requires something real and substantial upon which the
blessing can rest. She claims she wishes to donate that huge
sum but I, personally, do not believe that she can do so. Any
normal person is incapable of giving away his entire fortune
to the very last penny all at once — it is simply
against human nature, even if it is to the worthiest of
causes, unless he is really an extraordinary person.

"I saw that she really did wish to give, and I really wanted
to bless her, for she wanted a blessing for something good
and beneficial. I also wanted to help your yeshiva. So I
tried to figure out a reasonable, practical scheme to do so,
to make it easier for her to part with such a huge sum. If
she gave only a third of her intended donation, and this
third was legally registered on her name, it would go more
smoothly. It would be money that was given and yet still
remained in her possession in some way. I reckoned that a
blessing would have a good chance to taking hold upon such a
condition.

"I am afraid, however," concluded the Chazon Ish, "that in
the end, she will find it difficult to even part with the
third she has promised. But I hope that my blessing will
prevail."

The end of the story actually bears out the dictum that a
wise man can be better than a prophet. When it came to the
act, the woman was unable to part with even that third. We
went to the American embassy several times in order to have
her sign upon a transfer of Israeli bonds to the yeshiva's
possession, but each time when it came to the actual signing,
she felt a queasiness in her heart and had to take pills to
calm down.

She returned as she had come, not having fulfilled her
promise at all.

The Chazon Ish's wisdom had prevailed. He had foreseen, from
the short exchange with her, that this woman was simply
incapable of carrying out her own wish, even in the watered-
down form that the Chazon Ish had so wisely suggested. I had
been afraid that his advice would ruin our chances of
receiving a huge donation when, in truth, even the third of
our expectations was more than she was capable of handling
psychologically, which is what the Chazon Ish had foreseen
and tried to forestall.

After One Understands, Everything is So
Simple...

The previous story taught me to what extent we must embrace
emunas chachomim. When we are at a loss to fathom what
a great man wishes to convey, as happened to me we must,
nevertheless, firmly believe in what he says and attribute
our astonishment and misunderstanding to the fact that we are
too simple and puny to grasp what he really meant.

I learned how profound is the wisdom of our Torah sages.

Even after a great deal of time passed, I was still filled
with amazement at how I had not thought of what seems to me
now, with hindsight, so simple, logical and lucid. But that
is the way of Torah. Until the sage comes along, everything
is obscure and impenetrable and everyone gropes about in the
darkness. But after that wise man comes along to illuminate
the way, everything becomes so clear and obvious!

If You Grasp Too Much, You are Left With
Nothing

What Maran said upon that occasion — that a person is
incapable of parting with all of his wealth and giving it to
another, and it were better that he give something that is
commensurate to his real capacity — was for me an
important lesson and I made extensive use of it
subsequently.

I was acquainted with a wealthy but very stingy person. When
I met him shortly after the passing of his wife, he was
amenable to my suggestion for a sizable donation. He was in a
dispirited state and, in pouring out his woeful soul, he
confessed that life was all vanity and that he was prepared
to give me whatever I had asked of him previously and that he
was allocating all of his money and assets to the Sdeh Chemed
Youth Village institutions.

To be sure, I was very excited over his generous suggestion.
According to my estimate a donation the size of what he was
talking about could assure the future of the entire project
forever after! However when I asked him to actually draw up a
contract with a legal signature, I suddenly was reminded of
the previous story with the Chazon Ish. I understood that
this person, too, would find it difficult to give away all of
his money to charity when it came to the actual transfer.

I told him that his intention of giving away his entire
fortune was certainly most praiseworthy, but that I didn't
want him to do so right now but only after one hundred and
twenty — after he died, in a will. As for the present,
I suggested he give a much smaller sum, enough to cover the
cost of one small building in Sdeh Chemed. He agreed to this
on the spot.

His original gesture never came to fruition. After the
emotional excitement quieted down he forgot the entire
matter. But thanks to what Maran had taught me, I gained
something substantial and I was also able to help this
intrinsically stingy man do what he would have been incapable
of doing when it came to the bottom line.

A Personal Self-Interest Creates a Blemish in a
Person's Character

Maran was capable of plumbing to the depths of a person's
psyche and fathoming the very components that constituted his
soul. In accordance with this knowledge, he was able to size
up a person and assess which problematic trait could be let
alone, and which needed to be dealt with in all
seriousness.

A certain person, who was a great Torah scholar and
disseminator as well as great in acts of chessed and
full of worthy traits and attributes, was held in high esteem
by the general public. The Chazon Ish however, did not
respect him to any great extent. On one occasion I asked him
why he related to him with such dismissal. This man had so
much to his credit; he did such wonderful things. Why didn't
the Chazon Ish hold him in the same esteem as other Torah
figures?

Maran replied, saying that this person was incapable of
rising above his personal aspects of self-interest.

I pressed him further, "But this man has so many wonderful
traits. If his only fault is that he is not free of personal
interests, is that a reason to dismiss him entirely?"

Said Maran: "One single fault is truly not enough to
disqualify a person or to nullify his personality. A person
can be a worthy man in spite of a particular shortcoming. But
being weak in the matter of personal involvement, in
negiyos, is completely different since it affects his
entire personality. A person who has a negiya will
teach Torah with his personal interest, will do
chessed with a personal interest, and everything
praiseworthy that he does will be tinged with that self-
interest."

The Chazon Ish went on to illustrate a long list of fine
things attributed to him, showing me how they were tinged
with personal leanings. "Negiya," he explained, "is
not a single fault but a very encompassing blemish. Its
influence runs like a thread throughout all of his actions
and subsequently, all of the positive attributes which are
attributed to him are not really positive."

"He Will Survive the Crisis"

One of our group of students in yeshiva was about to become
engaged but in the end, the match fell through. The young man
was understandably very emotionally shaken up and even hinted
that he was about to take a very drastic step. We were all
alarmed and began keeping vigil over him day and night. We
did not leave him alone for a moment, but we soon found it
too difficult to keep this up and were at a loss for what to
do. In the end we decided to go and ask the Chazon Ish, and I
was appointed the representative.

Maran calmed me down and said, "Leave him be. Don't talk
about the matter at all. Just ignore it. You need not fear.
He will pass the crisis and everything will straighten itself
out."

In order to allay my fears and to help me understand his
reply, the Chazon Ish explained, "This young man has probably
read some novel (bichele) which described a similar
situation and he therefore feels that he must follow the plot
as it is written there. But there is no danger that he will
actually dare to take his own life."

As a result of his reassurance we stopped the strict vigil
over him as well as the pep talks, and soon the matter was
forgotten and our friend returned to his normal routine.

One Needs Farsighted Vision When it Comes to
Shidduchim

The Chazon Ish's intuitive understand of the human soul found
expression in other aspects of the subject of
shidduchim as well.

A rabbi once came to seek his advice regarding a match for a
young woman in his family who wished to establish a Torah
home. She herself was the daughter of a renowned talmid
chochom who had been killed in the Holocaust. The rabbi
mentioned several suggestions of fine scholars but Maran
rejected them all. Finally, Maran himself suggested a young
man who was not considered particularly scholarly. The rabbi
voiced his surprise at the choice.

Maran explained, "When it comes to a shidduch, one
must look at things with a far-reaching vision. A young man
can be a well-versed scholar and the son of a scholar, but
because of his character traits he might not be best suited
to carry on the golden family line. On the other hand, there
can be a young man who is not such an accomplished scholar at
this point but, being sincere and G-d-fearing, he can be
expected to establish a fine family of upright bnei
Torah which will continue on through the generations"
(Heard from HaGaon R' Chaim Kreiswirth zt'l, av beis
din of Antwerp).

A Good Shidduch

One of the people close to the Chazon Ish once told him of an
excellent match that was suggested for his daughter. He began
to enumerate all of the candidate's fine attributes: he was
an accomplished scholar, a marvelous innovator, boasted
superb lineage, good financial circumstances and so on.

"I have one question," said the Chazon Ish. "Having made all
of your inquiries and knowing all of the candidate's fine
qualities, did you ask if he would make a good husband? If
this particular aspect is lacking, it cannot be a good match,
in spite of all of his advantages."

Bas Plonis Destined for Ploni

A dear Jew from Tel Aviv once came to Maran and told him of a
match that had been suggested for his daughter, and sought
his blessing. Maran asked him which daughter was in question
and he mentioned her name.

How amazing this is. All the man asked for was a blessing,
but the Chazon Ish was not prepared to give a blessing before
knowing if his blessing had staying power — if it had a
foundation upon which to rest. He wanted to know precisely
who was the girl in question, and was able to differentiate
between that man's several daughters. He knew at what level
each one was and which shidduch was most suitable for
each one! And in the end, he advised the father that this
daughter deserved a better match than the one suggested for
her!

Maran's Intuitive Understanding of the Depth of
a Person's Soul

Maran had his own characteristic insight into the human soul,
as we find expressed in his work "Emunah Uvitochon
(Chapter Four, Os 14)":

"The improvement of one's character traits does not preclude
self love, for the tendency to seek honor and pleasure is a
positive drive in the makeup of the living machine called
man. Denying these natural drives does not build up a person
but destroys him. True mussar tells a person to love
himself and to seek honor but, `know what your source of
happiness is on earth, and what honor really is.' [Real]
honor is Torah. [Real] honor is humility. Real honor is
rejecting [false] honor. Happiness is liberating oneself from
one's natural tendencies and submitting oneself to Hashem and
to His Torah, which is the goal and purpose of life in this
world and the next."

Maran's approach was totally different from the accepted one.
The common approach is that an aspiration for pleasure and
honor is a negative attribute which we must fight against and
uproot. According to this opinion, uprooting the need for
recognition and pleasure is the most beneficial thing towards
building up one's character.

Maran had a different grasp of this altogether. He felt that
denying these drives did not constitute the construction of a
person's character. In other words, if one denied and
eradicated the propensity for honor and pleasure, he was not
building his character but destroying it. The proper way was
to divert those drives to the right channels. "Know what your
source of happiness is on earth, and what honor really is.
[Real] honor is Torah. [Real] honor is humility."

You Cannot Deny a Person His Zest for
Life

Maran's words in his work are reflected in the following
story, brought in the work, Ano Avdo:

One of Maran's close confidants, R' Shmuel Tzvi Kovalsky
zt'l, told him about a young man who came from an
environment totally alien to Torah but was accepted in
yeshiva upon the Chazon Ish's intercession. Sad to say, he
was not integrated well in yeshiva and he continued to
maintain contact with unsavory friends from his past.

Maran asked that he be summoned to him. He spoke to the young
man at length, first asking him how he felt, how the learning
was going, what he had heard recently in shiur and
what he had innovated in his studies. He made no mention or
even hinted at the boy's deteriorated spiritual state. The
boy left Maran beaming and uplifted, and returned to yeshiva
in excellent spirits.

After he had left, R' Kovalsky asked Maran why he hadn't made
any mention of his lapses and general backsliding. Wasn't
that the purpose of his summoning him?

Maran replied, "This boy does not have a zest for learning.
The only pleasure he has in life is his association with the
street friends. If I take that away from him, he will be left
with nothing. I must first imbue him with a taste for
learning and only afterwards can we remove him from the
influence of the street."

Love Yourself and Acquire Respect

Maran continues to explain along this vein: "The study of
mussar tells a person to love himself and to seek
respect and honor. But know what constitutes happiness for
you on earth. What is respect and pleasure? [Real] honor is
Torah. [Real] honor is humility. Real honor is rejecting
[false] honor."

Who is a respected person? How does a person acquire honor?
When he abandons his natural quest for honor; when he is
crowned with humility. "Happiness is liberating oneself from
one's natural tendencies and submitting oneself to Hashem and
to His Torah."

A person should not try to fight his natural inclination, for
this is the way to destroy himself. A person is not an angel,
without innate tendencies towards honor and the pursuit of
happiness. What then? He must come to realize what truly
constitutes pleasure and happiness in life, and what is true
honor.

Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Maran saw how these
things were realized in him. He was always so happy, and his
honor was above and beyond. He was the most honored person
and his honor was very real and true; it was kovod
haTorah, as he wrote, "What is your honor? [Real] honor
is Torah."

He earned honor, even though he didn't want honor and fled
from it for dozens of years. When he sat and studied in a
Vilna beis medrash he was unknown and unrecognized.
Only HaRav Chaim Ozer ztvk'l knew his true worth. But
"Real honor is rejecting [false] honor." When the Chazon Ish
immigrated to Eretz Yisroel, R' Chaim Ozer wrote of him, "A
lion has gone up from Bovel."

It is accepted thinking that a life of luxuries provides a
person with happiness, and one who indulges in whatever he
fancies will find pleasure. Maran says that only one who
succeeds in liberating himself from his natural desires is a
truly happy person. Only one who does not need those
indulgences, comforts and pleasures is a truly happy person
in life.

We sometimes meet people who toil in Torah and are steeped in
avodas Hashem. But the expression on their face belies
any happiness; it is full of suffering. They exemplify, "The
tzaddik beset by hardship..."

Maran did not accept such an approach. He did not see such
behavior as something positive but as a lack, a failing. Such
a person is forfeiting his very purpose on earth. And the
tochocho bears this out, " . . . [you will be
punished] for not having served Hashem your G-d in joy and
through the goodness of heart" (Devorim 28:4).

Whoever was privileged to be in the proximity of Maran, saw
and absorbed his way, learned how one must relate to false
honor and pleasure, and how not to pursue them avidly, but
rather to aspire to genuine respect, the honor of Torah, and
for the eternal bliss — to be subservient to Hashem and
His Torah.